


Flashbacks to the War

by wheel_pen



Series: Cinder [6]
Category: Original Work
Genre: M/M, Slavery, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-25
Updated: 2015-04-25
Packaged: 2018-03-25 18:21:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3820243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wheel_pen/pseuds/wheel_pen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Oleg and Patrick were once mere soldiers fighting to preserve Zemelanika from rebellion—though really, they were never mere anything, as their enemies soon discover. Some unfinished scenes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The bad words are censored; that’s just how I do things. 
> 
> Technically Cinder is not a slave, but he’s still living under subjugation; inherent in this are dubious consent, unhealthy relationships, and violence.
> 
> I hope you enjoy this original work, which was inspired by many different stories.

Patrick Gildea had always had an unusual facility for languages. Speaking and reading both English and Irish Gaelic as a child hadn’t been difficult, as one had been taught in school and the other in his home. Starting in middle school he was always at the top of his German class; finding the lessons almost ridiculously easy, he’d assumed his classmates were either lazy or stupid. It wasn’t until high school, when he amazed his Polish girlfriend’s immigrant family by conversing intelligibly with them in their native tongue after attending only a few raucous dinners, that Patrick thought perhaps there was something above average in his ability. One of his more starry-eyed teachers had even suggested he might have a future in diplomacy—a far-fetched dream for a lad from a grim, poverty-ridden industrial village. The idea had some appeal for Patrick despite its absurdity—he had always liked those movies with the backroom wheeling and dealing that ended up saving the world—but unfortunately for his idealistic teacher, Patrick had other talents as well, talents that proved more immediately profitable when put to the service of certain dangerous men at the back of the pub who answered to even more dangerous men in the cities of Northern Ireland.

At the moment, though, Patrick was able to use both of these talents, as well as any others he possessed, in one occupation—as a soldier in the army of a country he had never actually heard of, which seemed to regard the English language as a fairly undesirable curiosity. It was like the time his father had tossed him into a pond for his first swimming lesson as a child—a situation where he must learn and adapt immediately, or die in the attempt. And Patrick Gildea had never been one to give up easily. So now he sat on an overturned crate in front of a tent far north of the Arctic Circle, squinting at the foreign alphabet arrayed on a sheet of newsprint in his hands, always vaguely attuned to the noises of the military camp bustling around him.

“What’s this one again?” he called over his shoulder, pointing out a maddeningly unfamiliar character in the headline.

A wiry blond looked up from cleaning his handgun inside the tent. “Sss,” he replied, mimicking the sound of the letter. “Why do you keep forgetting that one?”

Patrick frowned at the newspaper. “That doesn’t make any sense,” he decided, shaking his dark head. “Look. ‘Rebels _Sake_ Boroskaka’?”

Oleg put his gun aside on the table crammed into the tiny tent and rose to lean over the large Irishman’s shoulder. “’ _Take_ ,’” he corrected, reading the headline. “When this letter _follows_ that one, it makes a ‘tee’ sound, not ‘ess.’ Well, unless there’s this other letter in front of it, then it’s more like… ‘tsss.’”

Patrick rolled his eyes. “Can’t imagine why I keep forgetting that,” he commented dryly.

“Come on, Patrick,” Oleg replied with a smirk, whacking his shoulder as he turned back to the tent. “Even _children_ can figure this out.”

Patrick was about to retort when he saw a goggle-eyed messenger boy nervously approaching them, a letter crumpled in his moist palm. The lad barely looked the minimum age for recruitment, more like eighteen or nineteen, and he nearly tripped over his own feet en route to the tent. “Message coming, sir,” Patrick said, low, and Oleg stuck his head back out of the tent in annoyance. The blond officer was always eager for orders involving dangerous missions, but lately the only messages he’d received from his commanding officers were about mind-numbing administrative tasks or, worse in Oleg’s mind, formal occasions he was required to attend.

“M-message for Pr-private Gildea,” the youngster stuttered stiffly, mangling the name.

“Gildea,” Patrick corrected sharply, snatching the wrinkled, unpleasantly damp paper from the boy’s hand. Honestly, it wasn’t _that_ difficult. The Irishman pried the letter open and scanned the typewritten text, his expression darkening.

“So, what’s your name? Where are you from?” Oleg was asking the messenger in the background. He was _almost_ the blond’s type—young, skinny, awkward. But perhaps not quite pretty or whiny enough, Patrick assessed absently.

Indeed, Oleg soon lost interest in the boy and dismissed him, attention drawn by the frown on his friend’s face. “Well?” he prompted expectantly.

Patrick thrust the message at him. “Does this say what I _think_ it says?” he asked, frustration obvious.

His question was answered when Oleg let out a colorful oath upon reading the note, then wadded it up into an unusable ball and chucked it into the fire. Patrick hoped he hadn’t needed to keep that document for any reason. “This is ridiculous!” Oleg snapped. “You belong in the Ostreliat!”

Patrick shrugged and tried to take a more pragmatic view. “Well, sir, perhaps there was some qualification I didn’t—“

“Nonsense,” the blond interrupted firmly. “The only qualification is to be an excellent shot, which you are. They’re probably just suspicious of you because you’re foreign. But you understand orders well enough, so…”

They were both quiet for a moment, and Patrick could see the light of scheming behind his volatile friend’s eyes. And since he had quickly learned that Oleg’s schemes often tended towards the bloody and illegal, he tried to forestall any grand plans.

“Well, I’ll just wait for the next try-out, sir,” Patrick began, concealing his not inconsiderable disappointment as best he could. “It should only be a couple of months, and in the meantime I—“

“The Ostreliat leaves town next week,” Oleg pointed out, “and I want _you_ in it when it does.” His tone gave no room for dissent; but the Irishman had to admit he didn’t see what could be done. The higher-ups had rejected his application to the army’s elite sharpshooters’ division, of which Oleg was an officer; Patrick was more than willing to try changing their minds, but in this society he had no idea where to start. He turned to Oleg expectantly. “Well, you’ll just have go and see Major Brandich,” the blond decided finally.

Patrick waited a moment but that appeared to be the end of the suggestion. “And… argue my case to him?” he guessed. The Major was the army bureaucrat in charge of special postings, as to the Ostreliat.

“No, of course not,” Oleg told him, as if it were obvious. “You’ll have to bribe him.”

“With _what_?” the Irishman asked, disbelief apparent. His material possessions in this world consisted almost entirely of the clothes he was wearing, his kit, and his weapon—and most of that was army issue anyway.

“Sex,” his friend replied succinctly—again, as if Patrick were a little slow in the reasoning department.

“Oh, no,” Patrick began immediately, jumping to his feet. “ _That_ is not going to happen.”


	2. Chapter 2

The lad was sitting by the fire, enjoying a hot cup of tea with others in his company, resting after the day’s battle and trying not to think about the battle looming on the horizon. Just like dozens of other soldiers scattered about the camp, just like hundreds of others scattered about the field. Patrick stood in the darkness watching him, just beyond the flickering circle of light cast by the fire. The Irishman was motionless, save for pulling the cigarette away from his mouth for quick exhales. He was supposed to fetch the boy, but he had stopped for a quick smoke first—Patrick hoped it would give his commanding officer more time to calm down, and he knew it would calm _himself_. Which he would sorely need, if he returned to Oleg’s tent and found every bit of furniture in it smashed in a fit of rage. The forms to requisition _another_ cot and desk would be a b‑‑‑h to fill out.

As Patrick smoked, he watched the boy. He did this sometimes, when he was certain no one else would notice. He wasn’t... _interested_ in the boy himself—far from it. Despite finding himself in a country where the distinction between ‘straight’ and ‘bent’ blurred so much that nearly everyone seemed to be _curved_ , Patrick knew very firmly which end of the spectrum _he_ inhabited. He was, however, surprised to find that he wasn’t repulsed by the lad, either—a lifetime of social and religious conditioning told him that what the boy and his Captain did together was morally wrong, yet—Patrick found that it just didn’t bother him that much in practice. Of course the official word from the Church was that one _also_ shouldn’t go around blowing the heads off civilians from the rooftops, even if they _were_ bloody Protestants, so Patrick figured one more difference of opinion between him and the Pope wouldn’t matter too much.

So the reason Patrick watched the boy, surreptitiously, in as many different settings and situations as possible, was to figure out what _Oleg_ saw in him. The Captain was an... unusual man in many respects, and his loyal Sergeant couldn’t believe he’d choose a lad to share his bed with who wasn’t also more than usual. Valerii, however, had always seemed frustratingly ordinary under Patrick’s inspection. He wasn’t terribly clever, which was good because Patrick hoped never to be in the position of telling his besotted Captain that his lover was manipulating him. Personality-wise, he wasn’t exceedingly charming or funny, not that he and Oleg seemed to spend much time in conversation anyway. Patrick hadn’t spoken that much to him, either, but Valerii had always struck the Sergeant as a bit of a brat, prone to whining and pouting. Oleg didn’t seem to mind that, but Patrick found it irritating from a military point of view.

Valerii’s skill—as a soldier—was passable for a member of the Ostreliat, which was to say exemplary for the Army as a whole, but of course that was true for anyone else in the unit. Of his skills in other areas Patrick preferred to remain as ignorant as possible, but from what the Captain had insisted upon telling him, the boy was a raw recruit who needed a fair amount of drilling. Er, so to speak. And as to the boy’s looks—well, they meant little to Patrick, of course, but Valerii wasn’t hideously deformed, at least. He was young, almost certainly younger than the twenty-one years listed in the official papers—the war had lured many youths who were, legally speaking, still minors to sign on to serve their country, although Patrick imagined this wasn’t _quite_ the ‘serving’ Valerii had anticipated. He was also skinny, with dark hair and a face the Sergeant and his rough-hewn comrades back home would have derided as ‘pretty,’ effeminate. No doubt Oleg liked that sort of thing, but even Patrick’s disinterested eye could pick out others with the same qualities, just from where he stood.

Patrick finished his cigarette and flicked the butt away. He wouldn’t find the answer by skulking in the dark, wasting time while Oleg threw a fit. Tonight, anyway.

The first soldier to spot him approaching stiffened attentively and signaled his companions. Patrick ignored them. He had no use for them at the moment. The Irishman was instead focused on the look of displeasure that briefly crossed Valerii’s face when he recognized the visitor—the expression made him angry, irrationally so, and he didn’t bother discreetly disguising the nature of his errand as he might have otherwise. The lads all knew his intent anyway.

“Come on, Private,” Patrick said, grabbing Valerii roughly by the shoulder and hauling him to his feet. “Captain wants to see you.”

“What about?” the boy nearly whined, and Patrick didn’t feel at all bad about making him stumble over the stump he’d been sitting on.

“Wants you to polish his boots,” the Sergeant answered facetiously, dragging the boy along.

“More like polish his knob,” Patrick heard the others snicker, but he was far enough away now that he didn’t want to let on he could still hear them. He _had_ always found it amusing that that phrase was found in English as well as Zemelanikan, or near enough anyway. The little ‘arrangement’ between Oleg and Valerii wasn’t the _worst_ -kept secret in the Ostreliat, but it was close to. Oleg had never been a big fan of playing by other people’s rules and he followed the accepted decorum only enough to avoid _forcing_ his superiors to discipline him.

“G-------t, Sergeant,” Valerii complained, “couldn’t you tell him I’m tired tonight or something?”

“No,” Patrick replied shortly, propelling the boy along. They walked quickly, but not by the shortest route—Patrick wanted as many people as possible to see him with the boy, to know where he was off to with him. The Irishman was feeling vindictive tonight, after seeing Valerii’s look of annoyance and—shame?—earlier. If the Captain was going to go about shagging boys, why couldn’t he shag one who actually _liked_ him? Of course, Patrick reasoned, he must be more pleasant when actually _in_ Oleg’s presence—and the Irishman was certain that, whatever his other faults, the Captain wouldn’t outright _force_ the lad to be with him.

Valerii stayed silent until they reached the Captain’s tent, where sure enough there was the sound of wood splintering. The Sergeant felt the boy scrabbling at his grip on his shoulder. “S—t! Come on, Sarge, he’ll rip me to pieces!” the younger man hissed desperately.

“Well if that’s what it takes to pull him out of his black humor,” Patrick told him coldly, “then it’s bloody well worth it.”

The Captain was, understandably, upset when the Army lost a battle to the rebels, as they had that day—or rather, the Army had been forced to pull back, much battered and secretly relieved night had fallen. For two days they’d been trying to regain this town and the whole time Oleg had been arguing strategy with the Major in command. And for two days they’d made no progress. So in Oleg’s mind, they were losing, and it was the Major’s fault, and tomorrow they would go out and lose again. ‘Upset’ was an understatement in describing the Captain’s mood.

A tin cup from Oleg’s kit was flung out the tent flap past them. It had a huge dent in it. Any calming magic the boy could work was rather desperately needed, but Patrick would never _tell_ him that—might give him ideas.

“Captain, sir,” Patrick called by way of warning, and the wood-cracking noise stopped. After a moment Oleg stuck his head out.

“What?” he snapped, then as his eyes focused on the boy, “Took you bloody long enough!” He reached out and grabbed the lad’s arm, dragging him into the tent and dropping the flaps behind him.

“You’re welcome,” Patrick muttered, but without much bitterness. He took up a post near a fire several feet away, close enough to hear trouble but far enough away to be deaf to everything else. He wasn’t worried about the boy, not really—he always seemed affectionate enough when inside the tent, out of public view, and Patrick doubted Oleg would hurt him. Seriously. The Irishman was just there to make sure the boy didn’t freeze to death when Oleg kicked him out in the snow at midnight.

**

Patrick knew a lot of quotes about war. He had been engaged in war of one kind or another for years, so he supposed the quotes he picked up from calendars, speeches, and letters resonated with him the way... quotes about farming resonated with farmers. Or something like that. One thing he had noticed was that many of the older quotes—by folks with one name, usually, situated somewhere in Greece or Italy—talked about war being glorious, a chance to prove a man’s worth and die honorably for his country. It was only in the last two thousand years—since the dawn of Christianity, in fact—that famous people made pronouncements about war being hell, and how it was _good_ that war was so terrible or else men (and women, he imagined) would wage it all the time.

Patrick wondered about this change in the “official” line about war sometimes. Was it truly the result of greater enlightenment through the ages? The calming influence of Jesus Christ on the former barbarians of the world? Or was it just the proper thing to say now, to claim to despise war, hoping that the quote was remembered and celebrated by a future generation who lived in a more peaceful, civilized age? Certainly the Anno Dominis had been full of wars more destructive and horrific than all the Before Christs, so—as usual, in Patrick’s opinion—the official line was not borne out by the official actions.

Usually Patrick indulged in these thoughts in the mid-afternoon, while smoking a cigarette and leaning against a scrubby, twisted tree just off the field of battle, watching the privates and orderlies cart bodies and the injured back to the tents or the city. War also had rules, apparently, rules about allowing the enemy to scoop up their casualties after a battle, and not harassing them while they did so. Standing by this tree, or others like it on different fields, Patrick had even seen people from one side aiding those of the other, prying fallen horses off soldiers or holding someone still while a splint was put on a leg. He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised by this—it was a small country, after all, and it was divided by a civil war, not besieged by external enemies. Probably some of the soldiers in his unit knew some of the people behind the silent grey walls of the little town before them. Maybe they were even relatives.

Patrick finished his cigarette and tossed it aside. His commanding officer was unharmed, of that he had made sure as soon as the call to fall back had been sounded. Patrick had to check that Oleg wasn’t furiously yelling at his men to keep going forward. Again. But he wasn’t injured, either, and his mood was still foul, so the Irishman deemed it prudent to take a smoke break away from the Captain’s tent. And now that he couldn’t say he was still smoking, Patrick decided to take a look around some of the Ostreliat sniper posts, see if the sharp-eyed recruits had spotted any more weaknesses in the town’s defenses which the Major would refuse to exploit. Then, maybe, he’d venture back to look in on Oleg.

The northwest contingent hadn’t discovered anything new, unfortunately, although they’d confirmed the officers’ residences were located in the center of the village. Patrick knew it frustrated the lads to just _sit_ on information like that, but of course it was against the rules to target officers who stayed behind their walls, watching the battle with a telescope. Especially after the oh-so-civilized nightly truce had been called.

Climbing up the rocky slope to the northeast post, Patrick began to get worried. Truce or not, someone should have called down to him, to ask who he was per protocol. Perhaps the lads were just getting lazy and had already eased away from their posts. If so, Patrick would make sure they’d catch h—l for it. Couldn’t have that kind of sloppiness in a battle—eventually it would get a man—

Killed. A limp arm lay flopped over the edge of the rock, drying blood pooling underneath it. And if no one had attended to it by now, that meant everyone else there was—Patrick threw himself over the low rock wall and landed in the clearing at the top of the bluff. The man whose arm he’d seen—Berdy—was clearly dead, as the rest of him was several feet away. It looked as if a grenade had landed right in the middle of the post—a lucky shot from someone below—and of the three lads stationed there, none had been able to run for help. The ranking man of the trio, Cheslav, was an older codger Patrick had gotten on with—he was a poacher who’d been finagled out of prison by Oleg. Even at the ripe old age of forty-three he’d had keener vision than many of the younger recruits. Now his eyes stared, empty, into space.

And the third person in the group was—Patrick couldn’t remember, and he began pawing through the tumbled rocks, trying to uncover the last man. It was supposed to be Donat, he knew, but there had been some swapping among the lads due to Donat’s leg injury from the day before, which made scrambling up the rocky slope difficult, and the job had finally fallen to—

Patrick found a leg and hoped there was more attached, shoving stones and bits of grass out of the way as he worked upwards, mentally ticking off the men he’d seen on the field below, either living or dead. Couldn’t be Roman or Stanislav or Tomas, Viktor had been toting bodies, Vyacheslav was already in the hospital tent, the figure was too skinny for Laurentij or Jermija...

Patrick pushed away the last of the rocks and sat back on his heels. D—n. A situation like this seemed to require a stronger oath, but—d—n. It was Valerii. Pale, still, covered in dirt and blood, rifle still at his side. Patrick checked his pulse at the neck and wrist just to be sure, but he already knew there was no way the boy had survived. Patrick’s mind was already racing, tumbling through all the various tasks that must be done to deal with this, starting with how to tell—

“Patrick?” D—n again. Maybe it felt appropriate because they were all d‑‑‑‑d for their earthly crimes anyway. “Someone saw you coming up—what the h—l happened here?”

The Sergeant stood quickly and faced his Captain, who was poking at Berdy’s dismembered body with a boot. “Grenade, sir,” the Irishman reported, and his voice sounded—different. There was no shame in being afraid of the unknown, he decided, and Oleg’s reaction to his boy’s death was unimaginable to Patrick. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Must have been a grenade, sir. All dead.”

Oleg was looking at Cheslav now. He made a noise that suggested he was sorry the men had died, in a tactical sort of way. For a moment Patrick thought his commanding officer might not even take a good glance at the body lying behind his Sergeant, but Patrick _wanted_ him to see, knew he should see rather than be told later, and the Sergeant moved aside a little, his dark eyes fixed on Oleg’s face.

He saw the instant the Captain recognized the boy, saw shock and disbelief blink through his steel-grey eyes. Then saw his expression harden over, so that by the time Oleg walked stiffly to the boy’s body and sank down on his knees beside it, his face was a mask—an unpleasant mask, yes, but unreadable in the specifics.

Patrick stood just behind him, feeling oddly light-headed and detached, his world suddenly airless and quiet. A man like Oleg could do anything, anything at all. Hurl himself off the rocks, start sobbing, pull out his handgun and shoot the first living thing he saw—part of Patrick’s frantically processing brain hoped that _he_ wouldn’t count as ‘living,’ at least not if he continued standing still as a statue.

But he couldn’t continue. Oleg was also his friend, slightly mad or not, and Patrick couldn’t let him kneel there in the dirt like he was alone. That Patrick felt completely and utterly helpless at that moment didn’t change the fact that Oleg _needed_ his help.

“Sir—“ he began, not sure what else he intended to say. “He—he must have died instantly, sir, from the head wound...” Patrick had no idea if that was true or not, but it seemed like the proper thing to say.

The other man sprang to his feet but gave no indication that he’d heard Patrick’s words. He stared down at the boy for another moment, then spun on his heel, facing the Sergeant but not quite meeting his eye. His expression was... grimly determined, as near as Patrick could tell. Not a good sign in his experience.

“Sir—“ he tried again, but he was cut off when his commanding officer abruptly turned away from him and started striding back towards the field.

“Bury them with the others, Patrick,” Oleg ordered curtly, without looking back.

“Aye, sir.” The Sergeant began to follow his Captain, intending to give the burial order to someone else so he could keep an eye on—

“See to it yourself,” the Captain added, and Patrick stopped in his tracks, stuck fast by the order. He watched Oleg leave reluctantly, already calculating what kind of trouble the Captain might get into, as well as how to carry out his orders as quickly as possible. After a moment Patrick turned away and leaned over the rubble of the rock wall and waved to the men below, signaling a couple of them to join him. Someone needed to help carry the bodies down, after all.

**

Two hours later it was growing dark and Patrick was growing anxious. He’d pulled a few strings with the gravediggers and gotten Valerii buried right away, so he could obey his orders without taking too long. For the last forty-five minutes he’d been searching the camp for the Captain, ducking into every tent, investigating every shout. No one acted as though someone were committing mass murder just over the ridge, though, so Patrick surmised that however Oleg was reacting, he was doing it quietly.

At last Patrick spotted a familiar wiry silhouette striding between the tents, collar upturned on his greatcoat, ignoring any greetings from the soldiers he passed. Not unusual behavior there, at least.

The Sergeant waited until his Captain started to pass by him, unseeing, then grabbed the man’s arm and hauled him into the shadows between two tents. It was a very dangerous action to take, of course, with a man like Oleg, who was already struggling with him. “Sir!” Patrick hissed, and the Captain stilled. “Where’ve you been, sir? Are you alright?”

Oleg appeared to be distracted, poking his head out of their darkened meeting place to glance around the camp and make sure no one had noticed his sudden disappearance. “I need the head of every regiment to meet in the command tent right away,” he told Patrick. He was slightly breathless and his eyes still flickered right and left, watching for movement around them. “Can you get the word around?”

“Of course, sir,” Patrick assured him, slightly confused. “Is Major Matvey calling a meeting?”

“Major Matvey is seriously wounded,” Oleg replied shortly, voice low. “So, I’m in charge now.”

Patrick thought that over, quickly. The Ostreliat was elite enough to have a captain at its head, while most other units at the camp had only a commander or lieutenant. Technically speaking, then, Oleg held the next highest rank in the camp, but even Patrick knew it wasn’t intended for him to command multiple regiments. Besides which—

“I saw the Major coming off the field, sir,” Patrick felt compelled to point out quietly, “and he had but a scratch on his arm—“

“G-------t, he’s unconscious _now_ ,” Oleg spat impatiently. He took one hand from his pocket and started to run it through his already dirty hair, but Patrick grabbed it and held it to the meager light from the fires several feet away. Over his commanding officer’s muttered protests he yanked the other hand out of Oleg’s pocket and inspected it critically as well. They were both dark and sticky.

“Your hands are covered in blood, sir,” the Sergeant said, a slightly accusing tone in his voice. If the Captain was going to go around getting himself hurt without the Irishman around—

“Stop nursemaiding me, Patrick,” Oleg snapped, jerking his hands away and wiping them on his coat. “It’s not my blood anyway.”

The situation was starting to become clear to Patrick. “Sir, I wish you’d tell me about these things, so I could help you—“ he hissed, leaning in closer.

Oleg grinned at him, a thin, twisted sort of smile. “Better one court martial than two,” he commented easily. “Head of every regiment, right?” Patrick nodded dutifully. “And I want all my officers there, armed, just in case.”

“Aye, sir. You’ve got a new plan, then?” Patrick knew he was pushing, but he hated being in the dark where Oleg was concerned. It was too dangerous.

Oleg’s smile was more satisfied this time, and all the more chilling. “Hammer of God, Patrick,” he answered cryptically. “Get them right away.” He ducked back out into the main walkway, resuming his path to the command tent.

Patrick shook his dark hair and stepped out the other way, heading for a group of able-bodied privates hanging around a fire. Oleg was not given to religious metaphors, normally... but just because he’d never knocked a superior officer unconscious and taken over his command _before_ , didn’t mean he couldn’t start doing _that_ , either.

**

Aleksei Lutorov was the last officer to limp into the command tent, and with the bloodied bandage tied ‘round his thigh he looked like he’d most recently fought his way out of the field hospital. Patrick could have offered the young lieutenant a chair, but he wouldn’t have accepted—military pride and all. Besides which, Patrick didn’t like the ambitious little b-----d that much. Lutorov gave the same speculative glance to the Ostreliat officers posted at each corner of the tent that the other arrivals had, but he was the only person to look anticipatory instead of alarmed by their presence. Another reason to keep an eye on him, in Patrick’s opinion—he was too clever by half.

Oleg glanced up from the map of the village he was pouring over on the center table, briefly acknowledging Lutorov’s appearance. “Right,” he began, voice rising over the murmurs of the other officers. “Major Matvey’s out of commission for the moment, so I’m in charge, and I’ve got a plan to take that bloody town once and for all.”

Not the smoothest announcement ever, Patrick had to admit, but politics were never one of Oleg’s strengths. Predictably this set up a clamor from the other officers, who had heard rumors to this effect and hoped they could be dismissed. “Shut up, all of you!” Oleg ordered, and the tent fell silent. “Does anyone here outrank me? No? Then that puts me in command.”

“But, Kondratovich,” objected Commander Fishel, “you’re only supposed to command the Ostreliat—I mean, it was never intended that you be Matvey’s successor—“

“You have a problem with the Ostreliat?” Oleg’s gaze was ice-cold on the older man, who unconsciously glanced at the loyal officers stationed around the tent. At this distance, he must be thinking, one didn’t need to be a sharpshooter to hit their target.

“The 4th Division doesn’t have a problem being led by the best-trained soldiers in the Army,” Lutorov told them simply, his own steely glare making the other officers shift uncomfortably.

_A-slicker_ , Patrick thought reflexively, but he decided the younger man was at least good for _something_.

Seeing that no one else was going to raise an immediate objection, Oleg pointed to a spot on the map about a quarter-kilometer from the village. He had marked it with an X. “This is where the electric line for the village comes in,” he said, tapping the X. “We’re going to start by cutting the line. Now—“

“But we can’t cut their power,” interrupted Lieutenant Commander Grunau, glancing around at the others for support. “They’ll freeze without it.”

There were a few agreeing nods until Oleg exploded, “We’re sleeping in _tents_ , you bloody idiots! They’re sleeping in _buildings_! With more than one blanket apiece, g‑‑‑‑‑‑‑t! They won’t freeze. Right away, anyway,” he added without concern.

“Um, but, _sir_ ,” Lieutenant Helkvist ventured, and Patrick heard him almost choke on the ‘sir’ and smirked. “We’re soldiers, and used to sleeping in tents, and they’ve got non-combatants in the village. Sir. Children and old folks and the injured—“

Oleg rolled his eyes. “They’ve also got _generators_ ,” he sneered, his tone clearly saying he wished it were otherwise. “And also—I don’t care.”

Patrick couldn’t help it—he grinned broadly, just for an instant. Some people might have shirked under the spotlight of leadership, let other people’s advice contradict their own instincts, but not Oleg. He’d seized his opportunity—made it, really, thoughts of Major Matvey lying in the hospital tent flashing through the Sergeant’s mind—and he was taking advantage of it. Patrick had never felt so proud of him.

“Now,” Oleg continued, “the power line will be guarded, and I need a band who can sneak in there and get the job done without giving anyone a chance to set off alarms.” He looked around the table expectantly.

“I think I have just the men for that job, sir,” Lutorov assured him, and Oleg smirked a bit.

“I thought you might, Aleksei,” he agreed, then added sharply, “Where the h—l are your CO’s, by the way?”

“Dead or dying, sir,” the younger man replied. He had the grace to grimace.

Grace was not one of Oleg’s strengths either. “Lucky you,” he responded easily. “Take care of this properly and I’ll make you a commander.” Patrick had never actually _seen_ someone’s eyes gleam before, but there was no doubt Lutorov’s were. The other officers glanced at each other dubiously.

“Commander Abzaev,” Oleg went on, and his second-in-command stepped forward briskly. “Put our men on every bit of high ground overlooking the village. Put them in the d—n trees if you have to. As soon as the lights go out, I want them picking off guards along the top of the wall. And anyone else they see running around down there. The officers’ quarters are in the center?” Oleg turned back to check with Patrick, who nodded once in confirmation. “Have them try to catch a few captains and commanders while they’re at it.” He smirked a little. Patrick thought he heard a mutter from the other senior officers, something about, “Bloody sneaky sharpshooters,” but fortunately for the speaker Oleg was occupied with showing Abzaev some positions on the map.

“Commander Fishel,” Oleg continued, addressing the man who had earlier protested his leadership. “Where are the cannon?”

“Uh, we’ve got three, sir,” the older man explained, stretching across the table to point at the map without getting any closer to Oleg. “Here, here, and... here.”

Oleg made more X’s where the man had indicated, then frowned at them. “Why are they so bloody far from the walls?” he demanded.

“Well, sir,” Fishel replied timidly, “there were—enemy soldiers in the way.”

Oleg narrowed his eyes at the man; behind the Captain’s back Patrick shook his head slightly. Oleg _hated_ smarta-ses, timid or not. Except for Patrick, of course.

“Well, the soldiers aren’t in the bloody way _now_ are they?” the Captain growled. “So move the guns forward twenty meters and—“

“Begging your pardon, sir,” Lt. Com. Grunau interrupted, “but the enemy soldiers _will_ be in the way again tomorrow.”

Oleg stared at him as if he’d started spouting gibberish. “If you idiots do what I tell you,” he explained, dangerously slow, “there won’t _be_ any enemy soldiers by tomorrow.”

The officers looked at each other with confusion. Patrick divined the source of their befuddlement after a moment and could hardly wait for it to become obvious to the Captain.

He didn’t have to wait long. “You don’t mean move the guns tonight?” Fishel questioned, shocked.

“Of course, you _a-s_!” Oleg exclaimed, pounding the table with his fist. “It’s _all_ going to happen tonight! What the f—k good would it be to turn off the lights during the day?!”

“But, sir, the truce,” Grunau stammered, hoping desperately that the others would back him up. “We can’t go breaking it. The rules of war—“

“I don’t give a f—k about the rules of war!” A chair went flying; Patrick and Com. Abzaev, who were used to this behavior, stepped smartly out of the way. “You want rules, go play a f-----g game of cards. The only rule in war is to be the winner.” He glanced around the table, all the officers shying away except for Lutorov. “If anyone here has a different g-----n goal in mind, you and the rebels can go work on it together.” Patrick, of course, realized that anyone who tried to walk out of the tent would be shot immediately. For once, he thought the other people in the room realized that, too.

“Now,” Oleg continued, in a calmer tone, “you move the guns forward twenty meters, and you aim them _here_.” Another X appeared on the map, on the line representing the city’s wall. “That’s about eight meters to the right of the front gate. That’s where the ammunition stockpile is, right, Patrick?”

“Scouted it myself, sir,” Patrick assured him confidently. He was not unaware of the dirty looks he received from most of the officers, but he ignored them easily enough. Foreign ‘refugees’ had always been welcomed in Zemelanika, but many natural-born citizens preferred that the immigrants keep their heads down and mouths shut—and Patrick tended to do neither.

“Right. So, on my signal, you blast away at the ammunition pile,” Oleg repeated. “Get a fire going, explosions, confusion. _Then_ , you turn the guns _here_.” Another X. “Ten meters to the left of the gate. Start blasting and don’t stop until the wall is rubble.”

“You don’t want to bombard the front gate, sir?” Fishel suggested hesitantly.

“The front gate is the most heavily fortified and guarded area,” Oleg reminded him, in a tone that was less murderous than Fishel no doubt had feared. Oleg didn’t mind _questions_. Just _questioning_. “This part of the wall is thinner. They use it as part of the stables.”

There was a loud whinny from outside, perfectly timed, and Patrick saw his commander’s eyes narrow dangerously. Shoving aside whoever was in his way, Oleg stuck his head out the flap of the tent and shouted, “Shut up, you bloody nag, it’s a war, _everybody_ f‑‑‑‑‑g dies!” If the gathered officers had thought that Oleg was simply aggressive and amoral before, now they undoubtedly felt he was truly mad. Patrick wondered if maybe _he_ was going a little bit mad, as well, for finding it so funny. He could barely keep a straight face, seeing the alarm on the expressions of the officers as Oleg berated his horse, Polya, who was waiting outside the tent with the other animals.

“I want the men standing by to charge as soon as the opening is clear,” Oleg added, returning to his position at the table. “We’ll start with...” He glanced between Lutorov, Grunau, and Helkvist. “...the 3rd Division.” That was Helkvist’s command. “Then part of the 5th. Keep the rest of them, and the 4th, outside the walls in case a counter-attack is launched.” He looked around the table. “Tell the men to kill anyone who doesn’t get out of their way. Any questions?” There were none. “Right, Lutorov, get your men together. Abzaev, put the Ostreliat in position.” The two men nodded and left, the rest of the sharpshooter officers following Abzaev out of the tent.

Patrick watched the most loyal officers leave and noticed the change in the atmosphere of the tent. The remaining officers were giving each other significant looks while Oleg studied the map. Patrick readied himself, just in case. Better two court martials than one.

“Fishel, get the guns into position,” Oleg went on. “But do it _quietly_ , I don’t want the guards in the city to be alerted.” There was a pause, then the Captain looked up when the other three officers failed to move. “What’s the bloody hold-up?” he demanded.

“I think we’re not quite sure about this plan,” Grunau ventured, sounding more confident than he surely felt.

Oleg took the three officers in with a glance, then leaned threateningly towards Grunau. “You aren’t quite sure about this plan, _what_?” he prompted, voice low.

Grunau stiffened, but he refused to add the ‘sir.’ “And I think we aren’t quite sure about your _claim_ to the command.”

“I did see Major Matvey after the battle,” Helkvist told them hesitantly, shrinking beneath Oleg’s sudden glare. “He looked alright to me.”

“Well he’s in the hospital now, boy,” the Captain assured him, in little more than a hiss. “Go and check if you like.”

“Look, look,” Fishel began placatingly, “we can’t have this kind of dissension, not now. Why don’t we all just go to bed, get some sleep, try again to advance in the morning—“

“Maybe Major Matvey will be awake in the morning,” Grunau suggested, and his tone was just cheeky enough to set Patrick’s teeth on edge.

“Yes, and maybe he’ll be dead,” Oleg countered, practically growling. The three officers facing him did not, Patrick felt, seem to appreciate the danger of their current situation. If they thought Oleg was somehow less powerful because the Ostreliat officers had left the tent, they were sadly, sadly mistaken.

“Which is exactly why I also think we should wait for—“ Grunau never finished the sentence. Patrick knew from experience that it was uncommonly difficult to speak with your face slammed down on a table and a knife at your throat.

“Beg your pardon, sir,” the Irishman said cheerfully, bearing down on the officer. “But I thought your gestures were gettin’ a bit threatening and mutinous. So sorry if I misinterpreted them, sir.”

“Patrick,” Oleg chided lightly. “The map?”

“Right. Sorry, sir.” Patrick dug his fingers into Grunau’s hair and yanked his head up so Oleg could retrieve the map from under him. Then he rather forcefully returned the officer’s face to its previous position.

Oleg held the map up to the light critically. “It’s alright, I suppose,” he finally decided. “No blood on the important bits.”

Grunau squirmed and Patrick kicked him, hard. “So sorry, sir, my foot slipped,” he explained insincerely. Oleg gave his Sergeant a look and Patrick released the man. Grunau jerked up, wiping his bloodied nose on his already dirty sleeve and stumbling back. Patrick slid his knife back into its sheath and smiled beatifically at the glaring man.

“So,” Oleg announced, capturing their attention. “I hope there will be no more of this... confusion?” It was his only stab at tact. “Nothing that my rather sensitive foreign Sergeant might... misinterpret?”

“I’ll get those guns in place, sir,” Fishel conceded after a moment. He was a little older and wiser than the other two and better understood how to maneuver both _on_ a battlefield as well as _off_.

“We’ll ready the men and wait for your signal, sir,” Helkvist offered, glancing at Grunau, who spat blood on the floor—though he considerately aimed it _away_ from Oleg and Patrick—and nodded.

“Good,” Oleg told them with satisfaction. “Dismissed.”

**

Oleg inspired uncommon loyalty in his soldiers. Being not much given to introspection, most of them didn’t really understand _why_ they felt this way, however. There was something about how he _did_ , after all, maintain them as the best shots in the Army, of course. Also, he was crazy, but clever—everyone liked to feel they were part of a unit that operated outside the rules, but were so talented they got the best results and got away with their unruly behavior. And, if the Ostreliat members were forced to keep listing their Captain’s admirable qualities, they would surely add his bravery—Oleg had more than earned the right to sit up there on his ill-tempered horse and tell the men when and where to shoot, when and where to charge into the thick of battle, but he was always the first of them to plunge into enemy volleys, despite Patrick’s best efforts to hold him back.

Of course it helped that most of the men—and possibly Oleg himself—thought he was invincible. Well, not invincible exactly—Patrick had become an expert at cleaning up the many wounds that resulted from constantly plunging into enemy volleys, but Oleg always recovered with phenomenal speed, and no bullet or sharp implement ever left a scar to complement the mysterious gouge on his cheek, which he’d carried ever since Patrick had known him. And Oleg never succumbed to any of the illnesses that ran through the camp.

The Captain also had a certain honesty about him, at least of a sort that soldiers appreciated—when he was angry at someone, whether above or below him in rank, everyone knew about it. Not for him the maxim about officers sticking together and spouting only praise about one another before the enlisted men, even when said men had suffered for an officer’s mistake; the Ostreliat lads had often chuckled long into the night remembering the particularly colorful insults their commander had shouted about some higher-up while storming through the camp.

Of course there were also qualities the men surely wished their Captain could tone down or even lose altogether. His dogged insistence that if _he_ could do something—like march all night through the snow, or go without sleep for days—his men could bloody well do it, too, for example. Also his tendency to fly into a rage and start flinging objects and shooting things (so far, not _people_ , but most felt it was only a matter of time). Probably, the men also wished their Captain had just a touch more—compassion? mercy? basic human decency?—especially at the moment.

Patrick was staring straight ahead from his position just behind his Captain’s left shoulder, thinking about this kind of thing and smoking. Actually, he reflected, Oleg must have _some_ mercy in him, because he hated smoking and normally wouldn’t allow anyone to light up in his presence. And it would certainly be a b---h if Patrick had to watch men being tortured without the benefit of a cigarette.

Perhaps Oleg was just in such a good mood, he didn’t mind the smoke for once. The assault on the town had been a success, from his point of view at least, and it now rested firmly in the hands of the Army. Instead of sleeping in tents in the snow, the soldiers billeted in rooms at the inn and sometimes private homes, abandoned when their owners decided to flee the village for what they hoped were safer climes.

Patrick had been picturing wholesale slaughter of non-combatants as they tried to leave, but Oleg had said to let them go, as long as they weren’t armed. Now the Sergeant understood why: Oleg wanted them to spread the story of the town’s capture to other rebel strongholds, to weaken their morale. He _wanted_ people to know what was being done to the dozen or so rebel leaders who had been captured and put on display in the town square... and in Patrick’s opinion, even a p—s-poor storyteller ought to be able to make someone’s blood run cold with their description of what they’d seen.

He refused to put it into words himself. He knew the pictures would be with him for the rest of his life—there was no need to outline them with language as well. Patrick was a hard man, who grew up with little in the way of good and didn’t much cry for it now, and he wasn’t having nightmares or spewing his first non-Army-ration lunch in weeks on his boots, like some of the lads who’d been assigned sentry around the platform in the town square. But he _was_ very glad for his cigarettes.

Word had gotten around the camp about what had happened to the Captain’s boy, and Patrick agreed it was not unreasonable to assign a certain amount of _personal_ _retribution_ to Oleg’s actions. Certainly the Irishman knew his Captain wasn’t much interested in other people’s health or happiness, but he’d never so actively and specifically pursued their _harm_ , either, at least to Patrick’s knowledge, so perhaps—hopefully—this was just a passing phase. That silly little torture phase we all go through when a lover dies. If what Oleg was doing wouldn’t bring Valerii back—well, maybe it would make him feel better.

Of course Patrick had to work harder the last couple days—giving assurances to the men that their leader hadn’t gone ‘round the bend (which Patrick wasn’t entirely certain about, really), telling the other officers there was _no way_ he was going to try to persuade Oleg to ease off (the Sergeant figured it was 50/50 that Oleg would, indeed, end the men’s suffering—but the other 50% was that he would shoot Patrick for daring to suggest it, and the Irishman didn’t like those odds), and ferreting out various plots to do everything from put the captured rebels out of their misery to assassinate Oleg (nothing new there, though—as the Shashka’s nephew, Oleg had always been a high-profile target). As usual the Captain tended to be oblivious to any objections to his behavior, unless they were shoved right into his face. At which point he usually reacted badly.

Most of the other officers stayed away from the main square, Patrick had noticed, although the grisly sights available there hadn’t dissuaded _Commander_ Lutorov. The Sergeant had a very strong suspicion there was a plot afoot, but so far his network of soldiers, clerks, and couriers hadn’t turned up anything meaningful. Major Matvey was, by this point, recovering from his belated battle wound to the head (the circumstances under which it had been obtained were, fortunately, rather vague in his mind) but he was still in no fit state to command, so Patrick imagined that the slighted officers Fishel, Grunau, and Helkvist were complaining their way up the chain of command via personal couriers (the telegraph office and the generic Army couriers were obviously being watched closely by Patrick).

He heard Oleg heave a sigh in front of him and immediately dropped the half-smoked cigarette into the mud at his feet. No use pressing his luck.

“I’m getting _bored_ , Patrick,” Oleg confessed. Dangerous words.

A curdled scream rent the air. “There does get to be a certain sameness about it all, when one’s been in a town for a couple days, sir,” the Sergeant agreed carefully.

“It’s good weather for marching,” the other man observed longingly, gazing up at the sky of puffy white clouds. A fine mist suddenly ghosted over them and Patrick realized it was blood. He tried to discreetly wipe it off his face with his sleeve. Oleg didn’t seem to notice his own light coating. The Irishman sighed internally and thought, now he was _never_ going to convince the newest recruits that their Captain didn’t outright _bathe_ in the blood of his enemies. “I suppose we ought to stay here and await further orders, though.” Oleg’s tone indicated he hoped someone would try, just a little, to convince him that wasn’t necessary.

Well, that someone certainly wasn’t going to be Patrick. As much as he would _like_ to get out of this town, he had a feeling his Captain wasn’t going to give up his new-found power quietly. At least here, he was contained. So the Irishman said nothing.

“If _you_ got to choose where to go next, Patrick,” Oleg went on leadingly, “would you go to Shiavet, or Tecton?”

Patrick thought it over. “I’ve heard Zymursky is currently running the rebellion from Tecton,” the Sergeant offered. “Got all his top generals gathered there.”

“I heard that, too,” Oleg agreed. “Did I hear that from you or Central Command?”

Patrick was always pleased to know that his private information network was as good as the official intelligence (and sometimes better). “Probably both, sir,” he answered modestly.

“So you’d go to Tecton?” the Captain pressed.

There was a man yelling on the street. He didn’t appear to be armed, so Patrick sent a couple lads over to deal with him. Possibly another loud-mouthed protester. A night or twenty in jail ought to quiet him down. “Well, Tecton _is_ heavily fortified,” Patrick admitted, multitasking gracefully. “But there’s several regiments in nearby regions, and an all-out assault on the rebel stronghold would probably destabilize the movement across the country. Sir.”

Oleg thought it over, but Patrick somehow knew he was going with the other choice, for whatever mysterious reason. “If I could,” Oleg told him slowly, “I’d go to Shiavet next. I’d raze it to the ground.” Ah. Of course. “There’s about a dozen little towns between here and Tecton, not even as big as this place, but I’d turn them all to dust. Maybe I’d call _that_ Hammer of God.”

“No safe place to hide away, eh, sir?” Patrick guessed. There was a strange smell in the air suddenly, like—no, he wasn’t using _words_ , remember?

“Exactly,” the Captain nodded. “I’d lay it all to waste. Anyone who wasn’t helping the rebels, they could come back in a couple years and start over. Farms, businesses, whatever. But I wouldn’t let them supply the rebels in the meantime.”

Patrick had had exactly zero semesters of economics in his zero years at university, but he still felt there was something amiss with that plan. But as long as it was purely speculative...

“There’s Balashka, too, sir,” the Sergeant offered. “They’ve got a big crowd of them there. There’s that rabbi keeps stirrin’ ‘em up.”

“Yeah, I’d get him, too,” Oleg agreed, and Patrick had the distinct impression the Captain was picturing things behind those steel-grey eyes that would put the sights in the town square to shame. The Sergeant made a mental note to steer Oleg away from Balashka, should the opportunity to venture there arise, so the devil didn’t have to build a new, lower level of Hell just for them.

Both men spotted Oleg’s horse at the same time, picking his way towards them across the muddy square disapprovingly, and Oleg waved him closer with a half-smile while Patrick rolled his eyes behind his commander’s back. Polya was a smart beast, the Sergeant would allow that, but possessed of what Patrick could only describe as a poor attitude towards humans. Oleg only rarely tied or confined him anywhere—he knew not to wander off on his own, and anyone who tried to steal him would find themselves bitten and trampled with little preamble. Oleg patted his head affectionately as soon as he was close enough.

“And I intend to go to Voromov as soon as possible.”

Patrick thought back to what they’d been discussing and risked frowning at him a bit. “Next summer, sir?” he asked. Voromov was a minor target only, and so far to the north—

“No, before the end of the year,” Oleg clarified. “In the winter, if I had to. I’d show those f-----g rebels that I’d pursue them through a blizzard in the mountains. No safe place to hide away is right.” He rubbed the horse’s well-muscled neck. “You’d march through a blizzard, wouldn’t you, Polya?”

The horse snorted disdainfully and Patrick imagined him saying, “Of course. That’s easy.” Then Patrick decided he’d been spending too much time with his commanding officer—another of Oleg’s alleged supernatural powers was the ability to communicate with animals, or at least with his horse. Which, along with declarations about marching through blizzards in the mountains, really went a long way towards convincing people of his sanity.

Patrick knew it wasn’t just tough talk, either, the kind the lads indulged in when they’d had a bit of vodka and felt relatively safe in a friendly village’s tavern; to Oleg, marching to Voromov or laying waste to a dozen rebel towns was a big idea that, once spoken, suddenly became not only possible but also reasonable. And unlike many zealots Patrick had known in his previous occupations, people who had a questionable relationship with reality, Oleg rarely failed to accomplish whatever goal he’d set. To Patrick this meant one had to be _very_ careful about what one suggested.

The Sergeant coughed a little in the dry air but was about to reply to the blizzard comment when Oleg whapped him lightly on the arm. “You shouldn’t smoke so much,” he advised in a concerned tone. Here was a subject on which Patrick could safely roll his eyes, which he did. Oleg had to be about the only person over nine years old in the whole country who _didn’t_ smoke. Polya let out a sharp breath that Patrick interpreted as an utter lack of concern on the subject, possibly even a wish that Patrick keel over dead of emphysema or lung cancer, since Oleg made a chastising noise at the horse. “I’m serious,” he continued, seeing Patrick’s look.

“I know you are, sir.”

“I don’t see how the h—l you can march. Your lungs must be black as pitch.”

There was something comfortingly familiar about this discussion, complete with Polya’s distinctly snide whinnyings, even if it was punctuated by sickening crunching sounds from the nearby platform. “I try to drag myself along as best I can, sir.”

“I’m thinking of banning smoking from the whole unit.” Oleg liked to threaten him with this. “What do you think?”

“I foresee a sudden drop in recruitment for the Ostreliat,” Patrick replied with a bit of a smile.

“Plus, people who smoke get sick more often,” the Captain needled. Polya took a step back, as if increasing the distance between himself and any germs Patrick carried that were transmissible from humans to horses.

“I hardly ever get sick, sir,” Patrick protested. Surely his friend must be feeling better—he hadn’t heard any playful banter since this bloody battle began.

“Well, you wouldn’t get sick at _all_ , if you stopped smoking.”

“G-d, you sound like my mother. Sir.”

Oleg grinned, briefly but genuinely. The expression turned thoughtful when he saw Patrick give in and turn the collar of his greatcoat up against the sudden chill wind. Polya’s mocking nickering was no less obnoxious for being predictable. “You should go inside,” he suggested.

“I’m not going inside. Sir.” And Oleg called _him_ a bloody nursemaid.

“You’ve been out all day, and it’s cold.” Patrick looked pointedly at Oleg’s own coat, which wasn’t even buttoned up. “I was _born_ here,” the Captain reminded him. The Sergeant didn’t bother to point out how many of the natives felt the cold even more keenly than _he_ did. Yet another of Oleg’s qualities—having antifreeze instead of blood. Might explain a few other things about him as well. “Come on,” the Captain continued, taking Patrick’s shoulder. “I’ll buy you a pint.”

“Well, I won’t turn that down, sir.” Their backs to the town square now as they headed to a half-deserted tavern, Polya boredly in tow, Patrick could still see the images dancing in front of his eyes, like the spots after staring at a bright light. He tried to focus his eyes on the muddy thoroughfare instead, so he didn’t trip and fall flat on his face. Not very dignified, that.

“I thought I saw something in a report about greenhouses around here, Patrick,” Oleg continued, treading obliviously through a puddle his Sergeant and his horse had gone around. To Oleg greenhouses meant only one thing. “Do you think they have strawberries somewhere in town?”

**

Patrick’s subconscious mind heard the noise and started to awaken him, so that he was halfway sitting up in the cold, dark tent before he even realized why. Even fully awake he couldn’t identify the noise right away, until he heard a muffled sort of sniffling and a whiny sob. Then he rolled his eyes and fought the urge to lie back down and go to sleep again. Instead he took the single step that brought him from his cot to the tent flap and loosened the rope that held it shut against the biting wind, peering out onto the moonlit snow trampled down by the boots of the camp’s occupants. There, a few feet away from Oleg’s tent, a figure huddled on the ground, shivering, so pathetically helpless that Patrick was almost physically sick. Some days he really had a hard time figuring out what his friend and commander saw in this boy.

It was so tempting to just leave him out there. Let him try to survive on his own without anyone jumping in to save his sorry, scrawny a-s. But Patrick was well aware that if said sorry, scrawny a-s was found dead in the snow the next morning, the phrase “h—l to pay” would take on new meaning. And Patrick himself might miss the brat. Marginally.

So instead he gave a low whistle, snapped his fingers, called the boy’s name quietly, anything he could to get the lad’s attention without alerting the sentries. Patrick could do without _that_ kind of embarrassing explanation. It looked like the boy was almost _determined_ to freeze outside Oleg’s tent, though, until he finally looked up and the Sergeant could see the glittering of tears in his eyes and on his cheeks. G-d, Patrick felt like an a-s himself for a moment—he was only a boy, after all, who hadn’t grown up hard like Patrick and Oleg had. The Irishman waved vigorously and the boy scrambled to him quickly, clothing askew and with far too few layers for the weather.

He was whining before he even got inside the tent, and Patrick’s moment of empathy flamed out. “Patrick, he threw me out in the _snow_! In the middle of the _night_! Does he want me to _die_?! Does he want me to freeze to _death_?!”

“Don’t give me ideas, lad,” Patrick muttered, pushing the boy over to the cot. It was all of two steps; yet he still managed to knock into every hard object in the small area, and complain about each one in ever more self-pitying tones. “Would you shut up?” It was not a suggestion. “You’ll wake the whole camp.”

“Why are we _camping_ , anyway?” Yasen continued, helping himself to Patrick’s still-warm blankets. “It’s Siberia. It’s winter. There’s _snow_ on the ground. Aren’t you not supposed to camp when there’s snow on the ground?”

“Soldiers camp in the snow all the time,” the Sergeant pointed out, trying to be patient as he glared down at the dark bundle on his cot. “Scoot over.”

“Well, I’m not a soldier,” Yasen huffed, then added suspiciously, “Why?”

“That you aren’t a soldier is _blindingly_ obvious at the moment,” Patrick pointed out sourly, bodily shoving the boy back so he could lie down as well. Yasen shot to the other side of the narrow cot instantly.

“What are you doing?” he hissed with outraged surprise.

“I’m going to sleep in my own tent, on my own cot,” the Sergeant told him, unpleasantly aware that he was unlikely to sleep well the rest of the night. “Give me some of that blanket. What, did you think this was your second bedroom?”

“But, um—“ The boy struggled to think of something to say while Patrick wrested the blanket away from him. “Shouldn’t you go, uh, make him let me back in his tent?”

“Do I look like a fool, ready to get my head blown off?” the Sergeant snapped in return. “He’ll come here for you when he wants to. Which might not be ‘til morning.”

“Morning?” Yasen was still precariously balanced on the far edge of the cot, trying not to touch Patrick in the least. You’d think he’d never slept in the same bed as another man before. Which perhaps he hadn’t, unless ‘passing out in exhaustion next to’ counted.

“Oh, don’t be so skittish,” Patrick chastened him. “In this Army almost all the men sleep two to a cot, sharing a blanket.”

“Well that explains a lot about the Army!” Yasen decided pertly, although Patrick really had no idea what that remark was supposed to mean.

“They have to sleep that way, or else they’d freeze to death,” the Sergeant continued seriously, “all those nights when they make camp in the snow, in the winter.”

“Geez,” Yasen decided pithily. “Is the whole frickin’ Army gay or what?”

“Hard to tell sometimes,” Patrick admitted, then added facetiously, “No need to worry about _me_ , though, lad. I’d much rather have the bed to meself. And the blankets.” He punctuated this remark with a sharp tug on the coverings that finally procured some few inches for himself.

For a few moments blissful silence reigned in the tent, or at least blissful non-talking, as the two occupants of the cot made only for one squirmed around and finally settled back-to-back. For an instant or two, Patrick deluded himself with the fantasy that the boy would drop quietly off to sleep. Then reality forced its way back into his consciousness.

“How come he threw me out in the snow?”

The question held less indignant whine and more genuine hurt, so Patrick felt slightly more generous about answering it. “He just mistook you for someone else, lad.” Of course the moment the words left his mouth he knew they were poorly phrased, even before Yasen shrieked in offense.

“He _what_?!”

Patrick sighed. “Shut. Up,” he reiterated to the boy. “Tents aren’t exactly soundproof, you know.”

“Well?” Yasen asked pointedly after a moment.

“Well what?”

“ _What do you mean he mistook me for someone else_?!”

Patrick rolled his eyes. “You think you’re the first whiny little brat he’s had warmin’ his bed, lad? Not hardly.” He could sense Yasen pouting even through the darkness. Probably that exact thought had _not_ , in fact, occurred to the boy, who tended to be rather self-centered in the way that boys his age were. Patrick felt a tiny, tiny bit of sympathy for him.

“The lad before you was during the war. He was a private in the sharpshooters’ division, that _he_ was Captain of. Higher-ups tend to frown upon superior officers fraternizin’ with the lower ranks--wouldn’t look too good for the lad to stumble out of the Captain’s tent of a morning. So the Captain got into the habit of sort of half-waking up in the middle of the night and kickin’ the lad out, to go back to his own tent.” Patrick shrugged and adjusted the blankets over his shoulder, hoping the explanation would allow him to go back to sleep finally. “Probably campin’ out again brought the habit back, is all.”

A thoughtful quiet followed but turned out to be only a pause, not a stop. “What happened to that guy?” Yasen asked, more hesitant than Patrick had heard him in a long time, and the Sergeant could only imagine he was thinking of his _own_ future.

“He died,” Patrick answered shortly, quickly adding, “He was killed in the war. Grenade hit his watch station or something.”

“Oh.” Pause. “Was he... upset, or anything?”

Patrick knew which “he” the lad was referring to. “That’s one way of puttin’ it,” he agreed, unable to keep the smirk from his tone. Oleg was surprisingly even-tempered, for a man with his reputation. The reputation had been earned from those few times when he was tipped off-balance, because the results tended to be... memorable.

“What’d he do?” Yasen prodded, intrigued.

The Irishman thought before speaking this time and decided discretion would be the better response. “He took it out on the town we captured,” Patrick replied soberly, “but if I told you in detail it’d give you nightmares. Let’s just say it were bad enough that the Army took time out from a bloody civil war to have him up on war crimes charges.”

“Geez.”

“Yeah,” Patrick agreed understatedly. “He’d been found guilty and tossed in this little isolated Army post prison. This country forbids capital punishment, but they were gonna keep him in a hole for the rest of his life.”

“Did you bust him out?” Yasen asked eagerly.

“You’ve seen too many action movies,” the Sergeant scoffed. There had, of course, been plans afoot, very secret, treasonous plans that would undoubtedly have ended with Patrick being tossed over the southern border—Zemelanika’s version of deportation--and freezing to death on the plains of Siberia. “He didn’t have to be ‘busted out.’ Week later, bomb hit the Royal Palace in the capital, the one we live in, and killed his uncle, who was the Shashka, and the Shashka’s two sons. Leaving him...”

“...as the king!” Yasen finished triumphantly.

“Exactly. And you can’t bloody well have your ruler rottin’ away in prison when you’re losing a war to uppity rebels, and he’s the best d—n soldier you’ve got.”

“That’s pretty cool,” the boy decided.

Patrick snorted. “Yeah, well, I’ve left out all the gory parts, haven’t I? You want to hear about how the first thing he did when he knew he was Shashka was to shoot the prison guards? Or about all the towns he laid waste to, to crush the rebel forces, once he was head of the Army?”

“Um... no.”

“Thought not. Now,” Patrick added with finality, shifting on the cot, “ _you_ can sleep all you want in a wagon tomorrow, but _I_ have to be awake and paying attention. So no more talking.”

“Okay.” Agreed reluctantly, but agreed.

The boy, it turned out, was a squirmer, and Patrick was a light sleeper. So when Oleg stuck his head into the tent about an hour later, his Sergeant was wide awake to see it. “Um, Patrick,” the Shashka began in an unusually sheepish tone that also did not even _pretend_ to be a whisper, “have you seen the boy, by any chance? I kicked him out in the snow by accident, and...”

Patrick was already pulling himself up out of his semi-warm bed and gesturing at the remaining lump like a magician with a trick rabbit. “I’ll be delighted for you to take him back, sir.”

“Oh, good.” Oleg stepped into the tent, which really wasn’t designed to hold three people, and grabbed the boy’s arm under the blankets, hauling him up still half asleep.

“Wha--?” Yasen mumbled, disoriented.

“Poor little thing, out in the snow,” Oleg sympathized, and Yasen understood the tone if not the exact meaning. Making a protesting whine, he buried his face in Oleg’s shoulder and dragged his stolen blankets around himself more tightly. The whine turned louder when Oleg summarily stripped the coverings from him and tossed them back on the cot. “Those are Patrick’s. Go on, back to my tent.” He shoved the boy out of the shelter and into the moonlit snow for the second time that night and just shook his head at the resulting wail. “Maybe tomorrow night we’ll stay at someone’s house, eh, Patrick?”

“As you like, sir.” No use going back to sleep now; he’d have to pour over the route, select a suitable estate, and send them a note by the fastest messenger so they could spend the next few hours scrambling to ready their house for a visit from the sovereign. Who might very well shoot them if he didn’t like his bed or his breakfast. Better than sleeping in a tent though, Patrick had to admit.


	3. Orders to Balashka

It was common courtesy for soldiers to pretend that tents were thick enough to obscure the conversations taking place within. They weren’t, of course, thick enough, not by a long shot, but most people still pretended, because a tent was the only privacy a soldier got on the march, however ineffective it might actually be. Unless you were a common eavesdropper—there was one in every unit, who was both loathed for his underhandedness and anticipated for his bits of information and gossip—it was assumed as a point of honor that when you stood outside a tent you wouldn’t listen to anything you heard coming from inside. Or if you couldn’t help but listen, you would refuse to remember it. Or if you couldn’t help but remember it, you would at least never act upon it or pass it on to anyone else.

Commander Lutorov thought that whole theory was rubbish. But he wasn’t stupid enough to make it _known_ that he got much of his best information from listening outside of tents. Therefore, he could look down upon the common eavesdroppers _and_ still keep climbing the ladder to the top. Of course, most of the information he heard was more amusing than useful, but in a war you took what you could get.

He was standing outside the tent of Captain Kondratovich now—no, make that the _Shashka_ of all Zemelanika. The king, the absolute ruler, the dictator, some might say. Lutorov was of course not one who would say that. Especially since he was just about to go inside the tent and get orders for a mission that, if successful, could raise him up to a captaincy. But he _was_ a little bit early for his meeting. Wouldn’t do to poke his head in and catch the Shashka before he was ready. Probably best to stand outside for another minute or two.

From inside the tent came a groan. Lutorov gazed off into the distance, as though he were contemplating things of great philosophical import, and kept his ears turned towards the door flap. There was another groan, followed by a sigh.

“If you’ll just hold still, sir.” The voice of the Shashka’s ever-present foreign Sergeant.

“D----t, Patrick!” hissed the Shashka.

“Sorry, sir, I’ll try to make it quick.”

Could be anything, Lutorov decided, but amusing nonetheless.

“What the f—k are you sticking in there, Patrick? Is it better suited to a horse?”

“No need to get snide, sir. It’s the only one I’ve got.”

Lutorov raised an eyebrow.

“F—k,” the Shashka cursed.

“Perhaps if you laid back, sir, it might go easier.”

“I don’t care about easy, just get it over with!”

_I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation for this,_ Commander Lutorov told himself.

“Ah, now, sir, you’re makin’ me feel badly...”

“What the f—k do I care how _you_ feel?! This was _your_ idea!”

“Now, sir, you know it needed to be done, same as me.”

“Are you talking or are you _doing_ it?!”

“I can do both at the same time, sir.”

_Probably the real explanation is not nearly as entertaining as one I could come up with._

“Don’t go twitchin’ around on me, sir, I’m in a sensitive area here.”

“As if I didn’t know that! Come on, come on...”

“Don’t rush me, sir. You’ll make me anxious, you will.”

“D----t, Patrick, now you’re just teasing me!”

“Oh, I wouldn’t do that, sir...”

“The h—l you wouldn’t!”

Lutorov had heard a number of interesting things about foreigners, many of which he had dismissed as rumor. But the Irish Sergeant certainly had an... unusual attachment to a commanding officer that most smart people steered clear of.

Another groan. “That any better, sir?”

The Shashka’s reply was grudging. “Somewhat.” Pause. “Ouch! You g-----n Irish son of a—“

“Now don’t go getting p---y, sir.”

“I’m not getting p---y!”

“Ought to be used to this kind of thing by now, sir, a fellar like you.”

“I’d rather be on the giving end than the receiving!”

Well, given the Shashka’s penchant for skinny teenage boys—a penchant which Lutorov was not entirely adverse to himself—it was no wonder his... interactions with the burly, 6’5” Sergeant took on a different tone...

“Almost done, sir, I promise.” There was a pause, then a final groan, then the Sergeant added in a satisfied tone of voice, “There you go, sir. Now to get you cleaned up a little and ready for that little b-----d Lutorov whenever he shows—“

The Commander decided it was the proper moment to make his entrance and, wiping the smirk off his face, stuck his head into the tent. “Sorry I’m late, sir—“ he began, knowing he wasn’t late at all.

The Shashka sat on his cot, trousers draped neatly beside him, his huge Sergeant kneeling between his feet... tying off the thread on the thigh wound he’d just finished sewing up. And glaring at Lutorov. At least, the Sergeant was glaring, and the Shashka didn’t appear to care one way or the other.

“Great. The torture finally ends,” Oleg sighed as Patrick moved out of the way. “Sit down, Aleksei,” he added, indicating the desk on the other side of the small tent. Lutorov sat, although he wasn’t sure if he was supposed to discreetly look away when his commanding officer stood and pulled his trousers on, or if he should act as though it weren’t happening at all. Protocol just didn’t seem to cover this situation—not that Aleksei would have necessarily _followed_ the protocol, but it would be nice to know what it _was_.

Oleg grimaced a little when the stitches stretched with his movements, then sat gingerly back on the bed while Patrick brought his boots around. “Aleksei,” he began, and the Commander perked up. “You know the town of Balashka?”

Lutorov nodded quickly. “Yes, sir. It’s in the west.”

“Right. Apparently”—Oleg winced as he pulled his boots on—“there’s this rabbi or something there, stirring up the rebels. Right, Patrick?”

“Aye, sir,” Patrick confirmed dutifully. “Weissmuller.” Aleksei noted the name.

“I want you to take your regiment to Balashka,” the Shashka continued, “and if you meet any resistance, just crush the place.”

Lutorov dared to show a little confusion. “Sir?”

“Oh, come on, Aleksei,” Oleg chided, pulling on his dark green Ostreliat jacket, which he refused to give up despite his change in status. “Don’t be like these weak-stomached fools who prance in here in their clean, shiny uniforms and tell me I’m not following the proper rules of war!”

“No, sir!”

“Kill Weissmuller, kill his supporters, break the town’s spirit, make an example of it, make Balashka a name the rebels won’t forget,” the Shashka elaborated.

“Yes, sir.” Lutorov was already calculating the intelligence he knew about the town in question. There was _definitely_ a captaincy in his future.

“That’s all,” Oleg told him dismissively, and Aleksei stood to leave. “Oh, one more thing, Aleksei.” He stopped at the door flap and turned back. “Patrick and I are going to be marching to Voromov soon, so don’t bother me with questions for a while, alright? Because they won’t get through.” He stood, tested his leg, winced, kept testing until he stopped wincing. Then _Patrick_ was the one wincing. “Just take care of whatever it is yourself, alright?”

Lutorov smiled. He thought he was going to like serving under this ruler. “Yes, sir.”


End file.
